


Dark Water

by bearonthecouch



Series: Compass Series [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Gen, Loneliness, Regret, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29858154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: Freedom was never supposed to feel like this.
Relationships: Anders/Karl Thekla, Referenced Anders/Female Amell
Series: Compass Series [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2212782
Kudos: 3





	Dark Water

The rough waves on the Sea of Amaranthine pound the small ship, and the flames inside the lanterns flicker so fiercely that Anders is sure they'll go out. They somehow stay burning though, providing the cramped hold with an unsteady glow. Anders sits there, tucked in among the crates and boxes, huddled into a tight ball. He looks down at his hands, expecting to see bloodstained red there, but there's nothing. His breath catches in his chest. He forces the air in and out through his nostrils. Breathe. Just breathe. He can do this.

Above him, a lock rattles and catches, and a deep rumbling voice curses loudly and prolifically. The rattling stops. There is the creaking of footsteps on narrow stairs. Anders looks up.

“Brought you some food, boy,” a bear of a man growls. The captain of this illustrious vessel. The man holds out a tin plate on which some spoonfuls of potatoes and meat have been slopped down. Anders reaches for the plate, and takes it carefully. There are no utensils, so he figures he'll just have to lick at the food. His stomach grumbles as the scent of it wafts up into his nose. His stomach hurts, but he knows better than to turn down a meal.

“Thank you,” he mumbles, and the captain grunts an acknowledgment.

“I've run my fair share of refugees across these waters, you know. And I've not seen many who're traveling all alone the way you are.”

Anders shrugs. He doesn't feel like talking about himself. He doesn't feel like talking about what brought him here. But the captain is searching his face, searching for honesty, and it doesn't look like he'll leave without an answer. So what Anders says is “I'm used to being alone.” That answer is more true than anyone knows, but even though the captain seems prepared to believe it, he does not look pleased.

“Young man like you?” he asks. “Really?”

“I've paid you my fare,” Anders insists. “Please just...”

“Alright, alright. It's no business of mine. But I've had a dozen lonely years here on this boat. I recognize a kindred spirit. You eat up now, you hear?”

Anders nods. He watches the captain disappear back up the staircase, and then he licks his plate clean, slowly. He leans his head back against the wall and holds the empty plate in his lap, and only when he feels the heat stinging his closed eyes does he realize that he is crying. Shame washes through him, and guilt knots up his stomach even more tightly.

“There was someone,” he announces to the empty air. There was someone. He can still imagine his fingers twining through Rhyanon's long blonde hair, he can feel the warmth of her in his arms, the heat of her breath on his neck. He isn't sure if what he and Rhyanon had could be called love, but it was _something_. And he had thrown it all away. For what?

He'd thought for surethat his freedom depended on killing those templars, but now he knows that he will only be hunted down with the full might of the Chantry, no matter where he tries to run. Templars are everywhere. He's known the truth of that since he was eleven years old. And where is going? Kirkwall. He knows little about that Marcher city, hadn't paid much attention to the gossip among the Harrowed mages, even after he'd become one. He didn't belong with them. But 'not much attention' didn't mean 'none at all,' and he had heard dark rumors of Kirkwall. He believed them, if only because Greagoir had sent Karl there, and that sending away had surely been meant as a punishment.

Anders pulls Karl's letters out from where he's been keeping them hidden, and he unfolds them carefully. He traces his fingers over the older mage's tightly looped handwriting, squinting in the dim light to make out what words he can. He has most of the contents of these letters memorized anyway. He folds them carefully away again and finds himself whispering the words of a prayer: “ _And nothing that He has wrought shall be lost.”_

He _can't_ lose Karl. His heart thunders heavily in his chest and he leans his head back against the crate behind him, feeling the rough-splintered wood cradling his back and shoulders. Karl's words burrow into Anders's chest, and he rubs his rough shirt sleeve across his face, wiping away the cold tears he can't stop from falling.

Karl knew better than to use the word 'love.' They had never said it, never written it, never acknowledged it in any way. But Anders can feel the phantom shadows of Karl's hands on him in the dark. Karl might be his only chance to get back even a fraction of everything he's lost. After a year alone in a solitary cell, Anders has to go home. Not back to the Circle, but to the man he'd run away to try to get back to, in his own illogical desperate need, after Greagoir and Irving had sent Karl to Kirkwall. He _needs_ Karl.

And, if these letters are true, then Karl needs him, too.

Anders has always been known as impulsive, yet he is capable of more patience and planning than anyone gives him credit for. Rhyanon had seen that side of him, enough to be impressed and more than a little intimidated. Every single one of his escapes from the Circle had meant watching and waiting, and smiling as the templars made their threats, feigning obedience even as his need to run pumped through his blood with every beat of his heart.

The ship crashes through dark water, and even sitting in the cargo hold, Anders imagines he can feel the cold spray of the sea on his face.

“I'm not running away,” he says, first with the silent motion of his lips and tongue, and then aloud, so that the words echo back into his ears. He's _not_ running away. He's running _to_.

He calls a spell wisp into his hand and watches it light up the darkness. It's the first time he's allowed himself to cast a spell since he fled from the templars who'd died at his hand. The memory assaults him, tearing apart his concentration and snapping the spell wisp out of his control. It zips across the cargo hold and batters itself against the crates for a few moments, like a trapped insect, before dimming and dying.

Anders's breathing comes in rough gasps, and he's on his knees vomiting up his just-eaten supper by the time his brain catches up with his body.

“I'm _sorry_ ,” he whines, though who the hell is he apologizing to? The Maker?

He's a murderer now. He can't pretend he isn't. He's on the run from the law, as well. If the ship's captain knew that, would he be so eager to help?

Anders tries to mop up the stains of his own sickness from where it had splashed up onto his clothes, but he only succeeds in making more of a mess of himself. He leans his head back and tries to take calming breaths. His stomach twinges with every shift the ship makes in the churning waters.

He closes his eyes, and he remembers:

_Karl's hands on him in the dark, the heat of his lips on his neck, bruising kisses under his ear, whispered words of the language Anders had nearly forgotten, heard only from Karl's lips and no one else's: their secret. The weight of Karl's body pressed against his own, the desperation with which he grabbed at Karl's clothing and pulled it away so that he could feel the warmth of the older man's skin._

The memories leaves Anders shaken, empty and aching. He wishes he could just _talk_ to the man. Karl would know what to do. Karl at least would hold him close and stroke his hair and do everything he could to quell the guilt and fear that relentlessly assault Anders's every thought and breath. The familiar weight of isolation is heavy on Anders's chest, squeezing tight, making it a struggle to catch enough air. He isn't sure if he misses Karl specifically or if he's just terrified of being alone.

The ship cuts through the dark water. Tomorrow it will be pulled into Kirkwall's tides.

Anders snatches restless sleep, haunted by the memory of blood on his hands as much as by the demons of the Fade. _Murderer. Criminal. Apostate._ The accusations thrum in his blood. He holds his hand in a tightly clenched fist and feels his sharp fingernails pressing into the sensitive flesh of his palm.

“I didn't mean it,” he whispers to nothing and no one, but that too is a lie. He didn't have to kill those templars. There had to have been other choices, though even now he could not say what they might have been.  
He feels the rocking of the boat on the waves and lets out another shaky breath.

Freedom was never supposed to feel like this.

He slowly gets to his feet and makes his way toward the ladder the captain had used just a little while ago. Hand over hand, he pulls himself up. He hadn't ever promised that he would stay in the cargo hold, and the captain had never explicitly forbidden him from walking around on the ship. He crosses the deck and leans against the railing, feeling the wind on his face and watching the nearly full moon shine its bright light over the waves. He reaches out with one hand, though from where he is he can touch neither the moon nor the sea. He can feel the mana stirring inside of him, always stronger outside, connected with the rhythms of the natural world.

He looks up, at the stars littering the black expanse of sky. He does not know their names and stories the way that others do, but he takes comfort in their patterns just the same. He counts them, calming himself with the repetition of numbers the way he has since he was young.

“What's waiting for you in Kirkwall, boy?” the captain asks, coming up to stand behind him what feels like hours later.

Anders takes a slow, deep breath, and tells what he hopes is the truth: “A friend.”


End file.
